Category: Parents

The Sea Captain

Posted on by Carlos Declan

The great tales of our lives are always a matter of perspective. For example, the white-haired man I am today looks back on an excursion with the family from Seattle through the Puget Sound and on to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. We are on board a vessel carrying scores of folks. Not quite the Queen Mary but fit for inland cruising. There was wind, rain, and impressive waves, but it was altogether a cheerful and exhilarating day as we made our way along.

The old man’s memory is colored and contoured by a lifetime of other experiences, but there is still that six-year-old boy inside of me. He had never been on a ship and certainly never been anywhere near out to sea.

On that long-ago day he found himself on what seemed a mighty vessel running up through the Salish Sea and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The geographical names mesmerize his mind and challenge his tongue. They are out of sight of land, so surely the lad is forgiven for concluding he is a mariner far out on the briny main.

At first, he is a little frightened at harsh weather. The bow of the ship pauses in the air and then falls, crashing into the waves. The boy’s mind slips easily into the role of Captain.  He looks about him. Only the experienced seamen are left on the deck – everyone else, passengers and non-essential crew have been ordered below. Many are sick. 

A beautiful lass looks over her shoulder as she is bustled below by a seaman. “What a strong Scottish captain, you are! So brave! Keep us safe!”

“He will” the sailor says, as another wave crashes down on them. “Now, below with you, girly!”

“Honestly,” thinks the tiny captain, “those landlubbers and green sailors have not seen rough seas.” His eyes are bright and his cheeks red, whether from high excitement or the wind does not matter.

He is standing at the bow of the ship, his towering helmsman holding the wheel steady just behind him. The waters rise like a mountain, then crash and fall with such weight and force the sprout struggles a bit to maintain his hold on the railing. He laughs wildly. He is covered in sea mist and his shoes are soaked through.

He spares a glance at his first mate as the next cascade of water batters them.

“Steady there,” the captain calls. “I have seen many a storm worse than this!”

“Aye! Aye!” comes the nervous reply.

The captain gives the jittery helmsman a wink. “All will be well. Just hold on to that wheel and follow my commands.”

© 2019 Carlos Declan Pharis

The Packing Solution

Posted on by Carlos Declan

A trip to the farm was not something that appeared on the kitchen calendar after a family planning session. It was always wonderful, but it just up and happened. My father would call home toward the middle of the day on a Friday and announce to Martha that we were off to Knox County. As soon as elementary school turned out, I would be piled int the back of the car, rushed home and shortly thereafter, off we would go, speeding east out of New Mexico toward my aunt and uncle’s farm in Texas. 

It was about a 5-hour trek. If we got going quickly and only stopped once for a bathroom break, then we got there in time for a late meal.  Course, when you crossed the New Mexico/Texas border you automatically lost an hour. So supper was going to be late, no matter how fast we went. The time change seemed to fuel my Dad’s focus on getting out the door. 

“It’s 4:30 in Texas!” he would holler out to no one in particular, as he waited at the back door for my mother to get whatever we needed to travel with.

Once, after we had got going and were traveling down the road, I heard her say to him:

“Bill, scooting out the backdoor on short notice for several nights in Knox County isn’t like running into town for an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. Things have to be collected and packed. The car has to be taken care of. I have to get a snack packed and coffee made for the thermos. And you don’t give me any warning.”

He listened and then said quietly, “You make too much of all this, Sugar. When I call and say we are going to the farm just get yourself and the boy together and I’ll take care of the rest.”

There was a long pause before my mother responded: “Okay, fine.”

My Dad never seemed to get that phrase. They were married almost half a century. I never saw him snap on the reality that “okay, fine” actually meant that retaliation was looming. He never got this. Never. Well, he wasn’t getting it this time either.

It was on our next trip to the farm, some months down the way, when the ax fell on my father. 

I came out the backdoor of Will Rogers Elementary at the final bell and there my mother was in the car parked along the curb in approximately the usual place. I remember vaguely having a plan to go down the road to one of my bud’s house to ride bikes after getting home.

“No,” mother said. “We’re off to the farm.” 

That was fine with me. I loved to go.

I immediately noticed a difference in my mother as she drove us home. She was remarkably pleasant. Absent was the kind of tension that always came with the scurrying about that was required to get us off on these trips. She asked about my day and listened attentively.  We talked about the books I would need to take on the trip because, farm or no farm, I would have to get my homework addressed over the weekend.

When we got to the house I expected to be told to get out of the way, so she could tilt around the house like a whirlwind before my Dad rolled in. It didn’t happen. We walked in the back door, she went down the hall and shortly emerged with her small travel bag and a little cosmetics container that she always called her ditty bag.

She then turned her attention to putting together my little suitcase. She even called me into my room where she was working and very pleasantly engaged me in conversation about what I would like to wear.

After we packed my little bag she said, “Let’s have a cool drink and wait for your Daddy to get here.” We retired to the kitchen and she poured us both a tall glass of iced tea. I sat at the table and watched her calmly drink her tea and smoke a cigarette. 

Presently we heard my father’s old work car leave the pavement and roll up the dirt and gravel road to the back door.  At these sounds she began to clear the table and tidy up the sink area. When he walked in the back door, she had finished and collected our things. We stood ready to depart. 

My father breezed right past us with hardly a glance on the way to the bathroom. When he returned, my mother had installed me in the backseat of the car and the little dab of luggage was tucked away in the trunk. She stood outside the car and smoked another cigarette.

Coming out the backdoor, my Father had a puzzled look on his face. He looked at her and she said, “Lock that back door. There’s the boy and I’ve got what I need.”

For just a moment he looked startled. But that passed quickly. He locked the back door and scurried down the steps and into the car. We were on our way toward Texas.

We had just rolled into Seminole, not far over the Texas line, getting ready for the longer run over to Snyder when my Dad happened to glance at the fuel gauge. He was surprised to notice that it didn’t indicate full. 

“Gas gauge says we’re nearly out of gas,” he exclaimed. He then looked over at my mother with a kind of look that seemed to indicate that he expected some word of explanation would issue forth from her lips. But she simply continued to gaze out the window with a casual and serene countenance. 

He pulled into the Conoco station on the outskirts of town. I slipped out of the back seat and found the rest room. I didn’t need to go all that much, but when my Dad was driving on trips you didn’t want to pass up an opportunity. My mother stayed in the car. Shortly, we pulled out of the station and the trip was resumed.

Another hour into the trip and we were really into rural country. It was dinner time now, and my Father asked for his thermos of coffee. And maybe it was time to have a sandwich? Martha said there wasn’t any.

Dad was puzzled. Nothing? Really?

Martha shrugged and looked out her window.

I could tell Dad was puzzled and working on how this turn of events came to be. I watched him carefully. He just kept staring straight out the window, watching the road. But his hands were working on the wheel in an agitated manner. He finally took a plentiful breath, gave a long exhaling “well” and then lapsed into silence. We were all quiet now.

Finally he announced, “We’re almost to Snyder, and I’m hungry. Guess we’ll stop there and get a little something. How would that be, Shorty?”

I was enthusiastic, of course. A second stop on a trip was unprecedented, let alone getting to eat out somewhere.

We made to the farm about an hour and a half later than usual and settled in for the night right after.

I came around the corner into the kitchen the next morning to find my father sitting at the table, cup of coffee in hand and a perplexed kind of look on his face.  My uncle, Charles Meek, sat on the other side of the table with his chair tilted back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Aunt Gladys was at the stove and Martha was serving biscuits onto the table. 

Bill looked up at her and said, “You didn’t bring any of my things?  Nothing?”

“Well, like I said, no, I didn’t bring any of your things.”

My Dad turned his face and gazed at his brother-in-law who, still grinning, nodded almost imperceptibly.

My Mother continued, “Bill, you told me to get myself and the boy in the car with whatever we needed, and you would take care of the rest.”

“Well,” my Dad said and then just let that word hang in the air like an orphan.

“You know,” my uncle offered, “it sure is nice to have a wife who will obey.” He continued to grin broadly.

My Dad looked over at him and said quietly, “Yeah.” Then, “A blessing sure enough.”

Aunt Gladys approached the table with the eggs while my mom got the rest of the things in place. “You boys eat some breakfast and we’ll get you outfitted while Charles is out tending to chores” my aunt directed.

By now I had taken my place at the table and noticed my Dad was wearing the same clothes he had driven down in, that he needed a shave, and that his hair wasn’t all that tidy. But he was quite a sight to see once he had been equipped with a new wardrobe and kit for the weekend!

Dad usually wore his fishing cap, which was really an old ball cap that was stashed in his tackle box which was, of course, back in the storeroom at home. One of Uncle Charles’ straw work hats fit after a fashion.

A cotton work shirt, again from Charles’ closet, was pressed into action. It served but did not fit all that well.  It was more than big enough around the chest and girth. Charles was a stockier man than Bill Pharis. He was a good deal shorter as well. So, the shirt was bigger and baggier than needed, and the sleeves were short. Real short. That was remedied by simply rolling up the sleeves.

It was not so easy to disguise the height and weight differential when it came to trousers. Charles had plenty of denim work pants not being used. But the same challenge had to be faced as with the shirt. The waist was plenty ample. Gladys produced a length of rope that allowed Bill to cinch up the waist. But the legs were a different matter.

“Why you look pretty good in pedal pushers, Bill,” chortled Charles when Bill appeared from the bedroom with breeches legs that barely covered his calves. He still had his long black socks on that he had worn to work the day before, so these covered up the exposed part of his legs. 

It was spring so no jacket was required.

The problem of shoes could not be fixed. Bill had exceptionally long and narrow feet. He would simply have to make do with his dress shoes he had worn down. 

“Let’s look on the bright side,” he said to Charles.  “Man can’t do chores in dress shoes.”

“Fair enough” Charles said with a grin.  “Don’t want to see you sloshing around near the hog trough in those” pointing at his shoes. 

The process was complete when Gladys produced a toothbrush still packaged up which she had back in the closet. Bill and Charles could share a razor.

On Saturday afternoon Bill, my uncle and I piled into the truck and went down to Paul’s Store to pick up some bait before heading over to Lake Kemp for some fishing.

My Dad’s dress caught Paul’s attention the minute we walked through the door, but he didn’t say anything. Charles just grinned when he caught Paul eyeing my Dad. “Town folk dress funny,” Charles remarked. 

My Dad took the invitation to tell the tale. The men all joined in commiserating about the challenge of dealing with wives.  They ended the whole thing with the old proverb: “women — can’t live with them and can’t live without them.” It was good natured. 

The next time an occasion to go to the farm presented itself, my Dad’s approach was a good deal different. 

It was a Monday morning at breakfast. My Dad said to my Mom as he was reaching for another biscuit, “I’m thinking about calling Charles and seeing if he could do a little fishing this weekend if we ran over there. What do you think?” 

Mom looked thoughtful for a moment. “You talking about going on Friday after work?”

“That’s my thinking,” Dad said.

“I believe we could,” she said.

“You up for that, Shorty?” my Dad asked me.

“You know it.”

“Good,” my mother said. “It’s settled. I’ll have everything packed and ready when you get in on Friday.” 

Everyone Likes Sugar on Their Tomatoes

Posted on by Carlos Declan

Grandpa Pharis was a tall and slender man who, with the aid of his cane, stood very erect. His movements were careful and creaky. When he turned his focus to anything not right in front of him, his entire upper body, as if locked together, would slowly rotate. Nonetheless, he did not groan as he moved. He seemed essentially free of complaints.

His face was weathered and lined by the time I knew him. I think he was always serious. Only once I saw him on the verge of something that could have been a smile — if he had forced it.  I never heard him laugh.

Observing him, as grandchildren will do from an awed distance, I noticed he did not argue or offer disrespectful commentary in conversation with others. He did not interrupt people and appeared to wait patiently until they were finished. His responses, always brief, were offered then. He never cranked out woeful stories about how things were when he was a kid.

All these qualities set him apart. But the most remarkable trait was that he never spoke to me as if I was a child. I was a child, but he did not seem to think this changed anything for him. His tone was the same as he used with adults. Occasionally, he would use a word I did not understand. If I asked him to explain, he did so matter-of-factually.

But we all have our “things,” – judgments, baggage, assumptions — and I finally found one of his.

My family was having Sunday dinner and my grandfather was present. The fact that he was at our house was noteworthy. It hadn’t been long since my grandmother passed. When she was alive, they had stuck fast together at their home where I usually encountered him. With her gone, his children wrangled him out and about some.

This Sunday’s dinner fare was not uncommon: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and a basket of biscuits. But then – as a final act before seating herself — my mother brought over a large platter of sliced tomatoes and placed them right in front of Grandpa.  We had eaten tomatoes before, of course, but I had never seen such a heaping platter full. Equally puzzling, the platter was presented to Grandpa Pharis, as if it had the Thanksgiving turkey and he would be doing the honors of carving it.

He acknowledged the arrival of the platter with a nod. Then, Grandfather reached for the sugar bowl, took off the lid, and dusted the whole platter of tomatoes thick as a hard frost. Taking some for himself, he then passed the platter to his left. Everyone speared three or four slices and passed it on.

When it got to me, I just looked at the platter. I was perplexed. I had never seen or been offered such. Frankly, it looked disgusting.

I appealed directly to my Grandfather.  “Papa,” I said. “I don’t want sugar on my tomatoes.”  I was expecting him to give me a pass. I was disappointed.

Grandfather looked up sharply and drilled me with his eyes. With irritation in his voice, he said: “Boy, everybody likes sugar on their tomatoes.”

I was stunned. I blinked. I looked at the platter. It still looked pretty disgusting to me.

I looked over at my father to appeal my case, but that went nowhere. He just nodded his head and pointed toward the tomatoes with his fork. Now my father was fair and considerate about things, and he would usually not think a disliked food was something that a person should be forced to eat. Yet there he was, expecting me to do it. Essentially telling me I had to do it.

It was hopeless.  I forked a slice onto my plate, and I managed to eat that tomato, sugar and all.

Grandpa Pharis will never know it, but there really is at least one person who has no interest in having sugar on their tomatoes.

  • Note: Carlos made me wash the sugar off these before he would eat them. He is not kidding around. — Cyd Morgan, Photographer

Holding On

Posted on by Carlos Declan

Suddenly I became aware that the baby they were talking about was me. I looked up from where I was playing on the floor to find my mother and grandmother smiling at me.

“I looked at those beautiful sparkling blue eyes and knew that sweet boy was going to be fine,” my grandmother said. Then she leaned forward with her needle point gathered to her, looked right down at me, and said in a hushed tone: “That’s exactly what I said. I knew you were going to be alright.”

My mother was nodding her head, as she smoked a cigarette and drank a cup of coffee. She grinned and leaned her head back a bit to blow the smoke upward.

My father was bent over a jig saw puzzle at the card table set up near the heater in the living room. He smiled broadly and nodded his head gently.

What in the world were they talking about? I looked at my grandmother quizzically.

When her eyes came up from her needle point, she caught my gaze and cocked her head a little to the side. “I don’t believe Charlsie has any idea what we are talking about.” Then she looked at my mother and waited.

“Well, I guess he doesn’t,” Mother said. She was silent for a moment, gathering herself. “When you were born, you were okay at first, but then you got real sick. You had diarrhea. You couldn’t hold anything down. You were just wasting away.”

She got somber. “The doctor said if you couldn’t keep your formula down and some water….”

Grandmother Vinnie watched her daughter’s face grow dark, and pitched in.

“But we weren’t going to let that happen,” she said with a smile at me. “We set in to doing everything we knew to try and get you comfortable. You would take a little of your bottle, but you would start crying directly and then…..Well, you would just burp it back up and what little you kept down came out pretty quick like dirty water from an old drain pipe right there in your diapers.

We didn’t really know what we were going to do. We had a lot of prayers going up but nothing was coming down. And then,” she said with a smile, “one came right on down.” And she looked at Bill.

My dad continued to examine pieces for his puzzle. He put a piece in place. Then, he smiled quietly, almost to himself, and said, “Yep.”

Now I was looking back and forth between Grandmother and my dad. “What came down?” I asked.

“The answer to our prayers,” Mother inserted.

“It’s like this,” Grandmother said. “You were just crying like a banshee.  We would hold you and rock you and sing to you and walk the floor with you and nothing would help. Then one of us, I don’t remember, either me or Martha Lois, put you back in the crib. We were just exhausted.

Your daddy tried to comfort you. He took his hand and reached into your crib and gently rubbed your little chest as you lay there looking up squalling and so distressed. And that’s when it happened.”

“What?” I cried, the drama getting to me by now.

“Well,” she said, “you reached up that little hand of yours (and here she demonstrated with her right hand going up in the air) and you grabbed hold of his finger.”

At that moment my dad held up the index finger on his right hand and waved it in the air gently for a moment or two.

Grandma continued: “You grabbed that finger, and the second you did, you took a deep breath, closed your eyes and went right to sleep.”

My dad was almost imperceptibly nodding his head up and down again.

“Martha Lois thought you had died.”

My mother got stirred up and seemed offended. “Well! He hadn’t been quiet for one second in days. What was I to think, him just suddenly closing his eyes and getting quiet as church during prayer time?”

Grandmother ignored her. “We just stood there amazed as could be. I whispered, ‘Thank you Jesus’.”

She stopped talking and the living room was as quiet as could be except for the sound of the heater motor pushing some warm air into the room.

Eventually I couldn’t take the silence. “What happened next?”

Everyone grinned, and Grandmother kept telling the story. “What happened was you hung on to your daddy’s finger as tight as could be for three days. You would wake up a little every once in awhile and we would feed you and you would slip right back to sleep.”

“And I hung on to his finger the whole time?”

“The whole time,” she affirmed. “I mean a couple of times we had to get old Bill repositioned and had to pry your little fingers off for a second, but you would start to tune up instantly. We got that finger back in your little paw right smart quick,” she finished with a chuckle.

“Sure did,” Martha said.

“Yep,” my dad said.

“Right, smart quick” Grandmother said again. “You were getting some good old sleep and keeping your food down and in.”

“But then,” Mother said, “we had two boys to take care of.”

They all chuckled together, leaving me to say “Huh?”

“We had to get pillows and blankets and a chair there for your dad to set in. He couldn’t move very far what with you having his finger tight as if it were in a bear trap,” mom started the story this time.

“We practically fed him like we did you. He was a one-armed man,” Grandma jumped in. “And then there was the issue of having to get the two of you into the bathroom. You wouldn’t let go of that finger,” and here grandma’s eyes flew open for dramatic effect, “so we could work things out for Bill to use the toilet.”

Martha added, “It took both of us helping your daddy, holding you and helping Bill.”

“Well, enough said about that,” said Grandma with a wink to Martha, and then she chastised us: “You two boys were a handful.”

They went on joking about how much trouble men were whether they were big or small, old or young.

My dad looked at me while they went on giggling and complaining. He smiled at me, and then he winked.

“What finally happened?” I asked him.

“Well,” grandmother said dramatically, pulling my attention to her. She put her needlepoint down in her lap and lifted both her hands out and open. “I guess you got rested up enough and got enough food in your little belly to stick to your ribs.”

Mother interrupted here. “You just let go of your daddy’s finger and opened your eyes. Grandmother looked down into your eyes and announced they were bright and clear and that you were going to be alright.”

Grandmother was looking at me real steady. “And you were.”

“You took a little bit of your bottle and went right to sleep,” said Mother.

“And your daddy got his finger back,” said Grandmother.

“Did you go to sleep then, Daddy?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “I had to go to work.”

Grandmother started chuckling again. “He was so tired his eyes just looked like two charcoal smudges.”

More laughter all around.

“I gave him a pair of my sun glasses to wear,” said Martha. “The sun hurt his eyes so, and lord he looked awful. Tired and wearing women’s sunglasses!”

“Downtown, they thought I was a movie star from Hollywood,” my dad defended.

Interesting

Posted on by Carlos Declan

Encyclopedia Blurred

I was sitting at the dining room table munching on my after-school snack when I noticed a collection of boxes sitting just inside the front door against the wall.

My mother looked up from the kitchen and caught my gaze. “You looking at those boxes?”

I allowed that I was.

“Just something your Daddy ordered,” she said. She waved her hand dismissively and moved on, opening the refrigerator to get something.

I puzzled on the mystery of what was in those boxes. After a minute or so, my Mom left the kitchen. I seized the unsupervised moment to hop down from my perch at the table and inspect the cartons.

The boxes were made of thick cardboard. They were heavy. I tried to push one with my foot and it didn’t budge. Unusual.

I felt my Mom’s gaze. She was standing in the dining area looking at me with a dish towel in her hand. “You through with this?” she asked, pointing at the barely nibbled snack and the half empty glass of milk I had left on the table.

“Yes, ma’am” I said.

“Then get it on to the kitchen” she commanded. “And stop fidgeting about those books.”

She started back toward the kitchen.

“Books?” I exclaimed. “What kind of books?”

“It doesn’t matter a lick,” she threw over her shoulder. “They’re your Daddy’s business and they don’t concern you or me.”

As I settled at the breakfast table the next morning, my father cleared his throat and produced a good-sized brown book from his lap. He opened it up, considered the page, and pronounced with some gravity “Aardvark.”

My mother stopped dishing food. “Bill, if we are going to read at breakfast it ought to be something from the Bible.”

He gazed at her with a pleasant expression over the top of the big brown book he held open in his hand. “Darling, we have a preacher that is paid, not well, but paid to teach us from the Good Book. I’ll wager…. well, maybe I shouldn’t bet on it…. but I am thinking that he is better trained to direct our religious education than I am.”

He said this with an air of satisfaction and returned his gaze to the book. It was clear to me that he felt the issue settled.

I looked at my mother to see what her take would be.

“Excuse me,” she said flatly. “I’ll be feeding the boy and myself. We’ll save you some for when you are through holding your encyclopedia class.” She proceeded to load my plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, and biscuits slathered with a big ladle of red-eye gravy.

My father seemed content with this and proceeded once again: “Aardvark.” When he was through reading the entry he closed the book, looked at me and said, “Now that was interesting.”

Dad gathered up his food, and the two of us proceeded to eat. Mother was ahead, but we caught up quickly.

Thereafter, an encyclopedia reading was added to our morning routine. And it was, just as he declared, interesting.

 

Hammered Toe

Posted on by Carlos Declan

At the time, I was a very small tyke, just walking and speaking. There was a uniform of the day I no doubt had on: a jumper that buttons up on the shoulders, maybe with a little t-shirt underneath. The sartorial package came with a cotton diaper and plastic wrapper that created a big bulge all around my bottom. It was completed with a pair of little white lace-up shoes that my mother polished freshly every day.

The eye-witness report of these events comes courtesy of my Grandmother Vinnie, who was there with us for one of her extended stays. She was sitting in the living room and watched the scene unfold.

My Dad entered the living room, intent on connecting with the newspaper and his cup of coffee. Upon sitting, he liked to get out of his shoes and into a pair of house slippers. Sometimes, especially in the summer, the house slippers did not get on for a while. They just sat there beside his feet while he drank his coffee and read the paper. Above all, he was not to be disturbed.

Enter me.

I acquired his hammer from where he had left it with all his other tools at the back door – a common place for him to drop them on his way in. Given that adults in my life only intervened on my activities if I was going to hurt myself, no one paid much attention to me dragging my Dad’s hammer about the place.

Eventually, I approached my Father, and announced rather matter-of-factly: “Daddy, I’m gonna hammer.”  To this piece of information, he responded with the kind of parental grunt given children when an audible response is called for but the energy or interest to get meaningfully involved is missing.

I looked around for something to hammer. With my one free hand, the other being used to hold my trusty tool, I patted my Father’s knee, disturbing his paper only the slightest. I asked with the kind of rational tone only a child can use when asking a completely bizarre question: “Can I hit your toe with this hammer?”

Now look, I don’t have a clue as to why, among all the things in the room I might have chosen to take a whack at, his toe represented to me the most likely candidate. A Freudian analyst would blather something about my sense that I had taken back seat to the news of Lea County and that I wanted to reassert my position as the only appropriate object of affection.  When I asked my Grandmother about it years later, she simply said: “Well, you know, little children do things like that.”

At any rate, it did register on my Father that a question had been posed to him.  He made one feeble attempt to join the conversation.  “What son?” he mumbled from behind his paper.

“Can I hit your toe with this hammer?” I repeated.

It is at this moment he made the error parents have been making in similar situations for years untold. Truthfully, he just wanted me to leave him alone, so he could go on reading the paper. His cup of coffee had been thoughtfully refilled by my Grandmother and he was fully engaged in the news. And so, he said, “Sure. Sure, son.”

I’m sure some of you are wondering why Grandmother didn’t intervene. I asked her myself. To her mind, the conversation between my father and me did not concern her in the least. The child was not in danger, and surely a man who had fought Hitler’s SS Units in Europe was not threatened to any great degree by a little boy barely able to walk, even if he was dragging a hammer behind him.

Having requested and been given permission to strike my Father’s toe with the hammer, I grasped it with my two chubby hands, lifted it, and let it go. Gravity did most of the work from there. And the head of that hammer hit his toe as precisely as my mother threading a sewing needle.

My Father bolted out of his chair like he had been shot with electricity. The coffee cup flew to his left and the paper rained down across the living room. He made loud and quite unintelligible sounds. (My mother seemed to have understood some of the words because I heard her later tell him he shouldn’t use such language in front of me.)  He hopped around a bit, which I thought was funny.

My Father did not think any of this was funny. When the pain subsided some and he got composed a bit, he made a grab for me. It was at this point my Grandmother concluded that she had a legitimate reason to be involved.

Grandmother leaned forward in her chair and said in an assertive voice: “Bill.” She had to repeat herself because my Father had a serious head of steam built up. “Bill!” she said again a little louder.

He stopped and looked straight at her. He had me dangling from one arm, with the offending hammer laying just out of my reach on the floor.  He gave my Grandmother direct attention.

“Bill,” she said, in a gentler tone now, “you told the boy he could do that.”

His gaze was incredulous.

“The child asked if he could hit your toe with that hammer.”  She pointed toward the carpentry implement that I was still eyeing.  “And you told him it was ok.”

“Well,” he blustered out and then let it trail off.  Finally, he said, “Well, Lord, I didn’t mean it.”

He let me back onto the floor. I sat down on my fully cushioned rump and began to handle the hammer with both hands.

My Father stepped away a couple of feet.  “I guess I wasn’t really listening to him.” He peered at Grandmother hopefully.  “I mean, did he really ask me?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said.  “I’m afraid so.”

The damage to his toe was not permanent, but the incident changed the way we communicated forever.  From then on, whenever I posed a question or wanted his attention in any way while he was having his alone time, the paper came down from his face immediately.

“Yes, Son?” he would say, and gaze at me intently.

Children Dancing

Dancing with Angela

Posted on by Carlos Declan

If I had been on my toes, I would have known that a dust up with my mother was just over the horizon. She had a very tight focus when it came to the child she was rearing: my actions needed to burnish her reputation as a mother. Accordingly, she was sensitive to the perceptions of others, and I should have known she would give serious attention to this latest adventure.

I suppose it didn’t help that Mescalero Hills was a small place. News traveled fast and consensus formed quickly. For example, suppose a fellow opted for coffee with his lunch at Polly’s Chuck Wagon as opposed to his usual lemonade. His wife might easily have wind of it before the waitress was back around to offer him a warm up. Many in the cafe would take note. Questions would be sparked: Why was Dolph drinking coffee at noon rather than his lemonade? Was this a change-of-taste issue or was there a darker answer? Perhaps he needed a boost of energy because he was slipping around on his wife. After all, Janet Hubley had just finished up her divorce and was angling for a man. By the time Dolph got home, half the little burg could be certain that he was moving out and shacking up with Janet.

So, my mother’s ear was always to the ground and her nose in the wind, vigilant for anything that might threaten her reputation as the perfect mother. I was not concerned about such.

At this particular time, I was even less concerned than usual. I was preoccupied by what I deemed a higher calling. The baseball World Series was underway. Baseball was pretty much the chief concern of my life, and the World Series was Christmas, birthday and summer vacation all rolled into one.

The 1958 World Series had even more of my attention than you would expect. The competing teams were the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves. The ’58 Series was a rematch of the ’57 Series, and the Braves had given the Yanks a good shin kicking in ’57.

The Yanks came to the ’58 Series with their pride on the line. Here was their chance, not just to regain the World Championship but to get even with the Braves. There was a lot on the line for me too. I was a serious Yankee fan. Everyone who knew me was well aware of this. I had taken a ribbing the previous year when the mighty Yanks failed to come through.

The Series did not crank up well for Casey Stengel and company. Going into Game Five, New York was down three games to one. The last time a team had come back from such a deficit to win a series was 1925. In order to win the series, New York would have to win the next three games in a row. Not that I would have admitted this publicly, but that would be quite a feat against the Braves. They were amply supplied with talent and highly motivated to bloody the nose of the Mighty Bronx Bombers two years in a row.

The crucial Game Five was played on a Monday. All I was concerned about was the game. Our principal gave us updates over the PA system once the game got underway. I did not even take a breath until the sixth inning when the Yanks scored six runs and seemed pretty assured of winning the game.

With the game headed into the final innings and the Yanks comfortably in the lead, I begun to pull my head up and get conscious with what was happening in my classroom. I realized that my teacher was talking about the oral geography reports that were scheduled to be given that day. I had forgotten all about it. I had been assigned to report on Greenland. If I had to march to the front of the room and deliver the report it would be deemed by Mrs. Pugh as woefully lacking in substance.

I listened intently. Mrs. Pugh was saying there would be a change in our schedule for the day. She explained that the Activities portion of class was going to run longer than usual and the geography reports would be delayed a day. With the threat of immediate humiliation lifted from me, I just barely listened to her explanation about why Activities was expected to run over time. We were going to start a unit on square dance, and there were logistical issues to be addressed. Assigning dance partners was one.

That suited me just fine. Anything was more welcome than the menace of trying to ad lib my way through a report on Greenland.

I would like to report that I used this reprieve wisely and got my report done that night. I didn’t. With the outcome of the Series still in question, responsible problem-solving was beyond me. At any rate, back to our tale.

When I was a third grader I was unsophisticated regarding social politics. I took it literally when the teacher said that she would assign square dance partners. Truthfully she did not so much assign partners as ratify the selections that had already been made.  Thus, through one machination or another, most of the pairing had been accomplished before we gathered at the back of the room.

I probably had the personality to get myself attached to someone in these circumstances, but, as usual, I did not know that such a process was afoot. What I was clear about was that in the end there was a predictable outcome to any activity that involved pairing or teaming up: a residuum of misfits and persona non-grata remained for the teacher to sort out.

I was frequently left with this little cluster of the dispossessed. I was sharp enough to notice that there were some benefits to this situation: I met a lot of interesting people. I was not seen as a snob. The kids on the margins liked me. Teachers knew they could count on me in a crunch. In this particular moment my third grade teacher had a crunch on her hands.

Washington D.C. was a long way distant from the Llano Estacado both in miles and emotion. But inevitably the wave of change set off by Brown vs. Board of Education made its way to us. Mescalero Hills had integrated its schools in 1956, and everything had gone relatively smoothly. However, there was still some risk for public toe stubbing over the issue.

And this brings us back to Square Dancing.

In the end there were two boys and one girl who remained without partners. The other boy was a lad named Delbert. He had multiple social and behavioral challenges. He was typically dealt with by being designated as some unofficial assistant to the teacher. After Delbert was factored out, there was only Angela and me.

Up until that moment I did not know much about Angela. That she was a girl was the most significant fact. No hint of puberty had as of yet ruffled the waters of my life. Girls held no hormonal or emotional appeal for me.

Girls were just facts of life that to be accounted for. For instance, you could not hit a girl without expecting serious sanction from your parents and other authorities. They couldn’t throw, and thus were essentially worthless for baseball. They didn’t like to play army. They giggled too much. I frankly could not reason that they were of much use. I was disinterested.

Square dancing did not appeal to me either, except for the brief moment it had gotten me off the hook for the Greenland assignment. However, this was a school activity, and Mrs. Pugh knew I wouldn’t kick up a fuss. When I was instructed to stand by Angela, I moved to her side very agreeably.

Now we all stood beside our partners (except for Delbert, who had to stand right next to Mrs. Pugh!) while she read  from the instruction sheet that would go home to our parents about issues such as shoes.

Over the next few weeks we learned some of the rudimentary aspects and moves in square dancing. A great deal of the technical aspects of square dancing have faded with time. That’s not surprising since more than half a century has passed. But, I still remember four things crystal clear about Angela. One, she had the most beautiful and ready smile I had ever encountered. Two, she loved to dance. Three, she was real good at it. Four, with her as my partner, I learned a few hot moves myself.

It wasn’t long before Carlos and Angela started getting called out to demonstrate new steps Mrs. Pugh was teaching the class. I am not saying that Angela and I were the new Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but we were good. We had fun. We liked each other.

Maybe that’s where the trouble really started.

At my elementary school, we had a number of Arts Assemblies each year. These were occasions when the whole school was in attendance along with a good number of parents. A collection of performances from the choir, the rhythm band, the drama club and gymnastics were typical.

I had never been a participant in these assemblies. Baseball was not on the play bill. Usually all that Arts Assembly meant to me was a Friday afternoon out of class and early dismissal.

This year was different.

Mrs. Pugh’s square dance class was to appear at the next Arts Assembly, and things had evolved in such a way that Angela and I had a little piece of our own to perform. You would have thought I was in a show that was about to open on Broadway. I never missed rehearsal and was always enthusiastic. Angela and I tended to our number as if our whole lives depended on it.

Lord, it was fun to dance with Angela!

Several times in the run up the the performance, Angela and I rehearsed our piece at the far edge of the square ball court at recess or even after school. Our delight in the activity and one another had been evident to everyone in class. Now that we were rehearsing outside, it was getting public exposure as well.

One night at supper I became aware that my mother was in “one of her moods.” These periodic storms were awful. They always began with silence and a scowl. I would do my best to steer clear of her. Sometimes these episodes of foul emotional weather had nothing to do with me.

When the issue was me, the storm would break in one of two ways. If it was a low level problem, it would be my mother who would eventually raise the concern with me. The good news about this was that she would generate a big verbal dust up, then go silent, hold a grudge for a few days, and the whole thing would dissipate. On the other hand, if the problem that set her off was something above a misdemeanor level, it would wind up in my dad’s court. The good news here was that my dad was unfailingly courteous and generally as fair as you could expect a fallible human to be. The bad news was the issue was of some gravity.

Tonight we were in the superior court.

The process began with my mother clearing her throat and casting a sour glance at my father. He appeared to be completely unaware of this gesture for a long moment or two.  Then he looked at me with a very neutral expression and asked, as he continued to cut his meat, “I hear you are learning to square dance?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” I said and smiled like a loon. You remember I told you that I had come to be tickled pink with the whole process.

As I answered, he watched me carefully and took a small piece of meat in his mouth off the end of his fork. “I was never any good at square dancing,” he said. “But I like to watch it.”

We ate in silence.

He spoke again after a bit. “Someone told me you cut a fine figure at it, that they had seen you practicing. Actually I guess ya’ll say ‘rehearsing’?” He looked at me quizzically.

“Yes, sir, rehearsing,” I said, smiling. “I guess I’m decent.”

He was quiet again. He had this marvelous conversational technique that almost always insured that you would go on and say more. It was a kind of attentive silence. You knew he was interested by his demeanor and the cast of his eyes. He didn’t say a word, but his countenance beckoned.

“There’s going to be an assembly,” I said. “My class is going to be in it.”

“Yes, indeed,” my mother said coldly, speaking for the first time. “There is going to be an assembly.”

My father and I stopped, turned toward her, and he gazed at her a moment. It was an evil tone if I ever heard one.

“I saw the flyer,” my Dad said. “I’ll be there.”

He was one of those dads who was always there unless he was traveling, which his work demanded occasionally. I was pleased to hear he’d be there, and a smile spread across my face.

But my mother just said in a caustic tone, “Oh yes, everyone is going to be there.”

My father did not even look up at her this time.

You could tell when things irritated him with respect to my mother. With some couples irritating remarks provoke looks and retorts. The more provoking, the more engagement. With my dad it was just the opposite. It was not so much that he ignored her. What my dad did was more a simple recognition that she was speaking. He offered a slight nod of his head toward her, coupled with a silence that spoke volumes regarding his disapproval or sense that her remarks were not helpful.

It was clear now that mother was headed toward a blow up.  But I wanted to say my piece before the storm broke full.

“I’m dancing a special number… me and my partner. We have a special routine we do,” I said with enthusiasm.

“Oh?” he said. “I sure want to hear about that.”

“We sure do,” mother said with a tone dripping with venom.

Now she had gone too far.

My dad looked straight at her and said: “Mother, we’re just having a pleasant conversation here about square dancing.” And then, “I sure would like to have some more of that corn bread if you have some over there on the stove.” My mother got up from the table and moved from the dining room into the kitchen for the cornbread without a word.

My dad turned his attention to me.  “Tell me about this special number,” he said.

Well, once started I went on and on like a drunk man. Who knows what all I said. I do remember that I described what Angela and I were going to do in great detail, about the music, and what everyone else was going to be doing while we would be in the spotlight.

He listened and smiled. “Well, I don’t want to miss that show.” He meant it. He never said anything like that casually. He offered a thank you for the cornbread my mother had brought back.

“Tell me about your partner, about Angela,” he suggested.  “I don’t believe I know her.”

I told you earlier that in those days I was a little slow when it it came to social politics. As incredible as it seems now, I thought my mother’s snootiness had something to do with a disdain for square dancing. Finally, it flashed in my mind that the real issue was not square dancing, but who I was dancing with.

“You say her name is Angela?” my dad said gently.

I smiled.

“Tell me about her,” he said.

I said she was a dynamite partner and I liked dancing with her. I remember saying she liked knock-knock jokes, was good at arithmetic, and had helped me some with homework a couple of times. I reported that her Father was a Yankees fan too, just like me. I had met him once when he came to pick her up at school and we had talked a minute.

My dad was not a Yankees fan. He just didn’t like them. I never knew why.

He said at last, “Yankees fans are a little scarce around here. I guess you ought to keep track of Angela’s father given you investment in those New York boys.”

Then he smiled at me, and I smiled back. I kept waiting for him to say something about the fact that Angela was Black, but he didn’t. The conversation went on to this and that. Dessert came out. Pecan pie.

Near the end, right before it was time to clear the table, my dad tilted his head and looked at me.

“Son, did you pick Angela as your partner?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

He looked at me in that gentle but attentive way.

“The two of us were all that was left, except Delbert, and you know…..”

“I know,” he said. “Delbert isn’t going to match up easily.”

I nodded. I looked him square in the eye. I knew what he was trying to determine.

“I like Angela,” I said.”Nobody made me dance with her.”

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t glance at my mother. He said firmly to me: “And nobody is going to stop you from dancing with her either.”

That was the end of it.

Except, my ego will not let me end without a report on the Assembly. It came off well. I am not exaggerating to say that Angela and I pretty nearly stole the show. We were good. It was a lot of fun. I am sorry you missed it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid New Mexico

The Windmill

Posted on by Carlos Declan

The view was breathtaking. To the west was our little hardscrabble oil and ranching community. To the east was the vast expanse of the sourthern edge of the Llano Estacado. Above and all around was a luminous aqua sky dotted with white puffy clouds. The air was clean and light as a feather.

I was five years old. I had climbed up to the platform atop the windmill at the back of our property. I really don’t know how I managed this.

There was a two-lane paved road that led east in Texas. I could see it inch its way along until it seemed to over the edge of the earth. There was little traffic. I would occasionally see a car or two and sometimes a truck coming toward town or leaving. The vehicles looked like ants moving in their orderly and busy way.

Back toward town there was a black top road that ran toward me. The paving expired before it got to our place, finishing as a dirt road.

Eventually a particular vehicle caught my attention. It was still far away, but I could tell that it was Dad’s truck. It was coming my way.

Mild curiousity floated across my mind. What was he doing? Was he coming home? Why?

And then he was there. He turned onto our property, drove the short distance up the unpaved trace, parked and got out. He didn’t seem in any hurry, and he didn’t head into the house. As a matter of fact, he did what he did most times when he came home from work.

He ambled around the backyard, where he and my Mom were working to encourage grass to make a stand against the sand and weeds that thought the land belonged to them.

He took his pocketknife and dug up the roots of the big grass burrs that proliferated. He would walk around cutting these things out of the ground, holding them carefully in his left hand until he had a kind of grass burr bouquet. Then he would go over and deposit them in the trash can at the back of the property.

He would return to work until he had another collection in his hand. This would go on for 30 minutes or so. It was a kind of decompression ritual. When he was finished he would go inside where my Mom would meet him with a cup of coffee.

But that is what he did at the end of the day. Here we were, a long way before noon, and I was peering down watching him digging grass burrs just like he did in the evenings.

I was puzzled. I sat on the edge of the platform at the top of the windmill watching my Dad as he moved quietly and deliberately. This was very interesting because I had never seen this activity from such a height or perspective.

I didn’t call down to him, and he didn’t seem to know I was there. Eventually, though, he looked up at me. “Well, hi, Shorty,” he said, a bit surprised.

Then his head went bacck down and he went on with his work. My attention moved back and forth between my Dad and the broad vista around me. I was torn: I always wanted to be with my father, but the view was fantastic. I’d never seen anything like it.

Dad began to gather a little bit of trash and some twigs to add to the barrel where the grass burrs were being collected. From time-to-time he would burn all the refuse, and I would ‘help’ by going around the yard and picking up other miscellaneous items as he tended the fire.

When I realized where this process was going, I swung my leg over the platform onto the first rung and started down. A fire was the final incentive.

He seemed to hardly notice that I had climbed down the windmill. He just went about getting the fire started in the barrel. I started picking up random twigs, and an old brown paper sack that had blown into the yard.

Wordlessly, I walked up to heave the items into the fire. I waited for his go ahead as usual. Fire safety was an important lesson I had learned.

“Toss it in from over there,” he said, gesturing toward the north side of the barrel so that I would be up wind of the flames.

As I was doing this, he stepped over to the ladder that ran up the entire length of the windmill. He reached up, and with his hand struck the inside of the 1″x12″ that served as a rung. Off it came. He followed suit until all the steps on the ladder were gone up to the top of his head.

He took the pieces of wood that had served as rungs and stacked them together. He had dismantled the low end of the ladder discreetly but quickly. And tending to the fire was consuming my attention.

“We’ll let that fire die down. I just wanted those grass burrs to get burned up,” he said, gesturing toward the fire. “Let’s get a hammer and get these nails out of these boards. This is good wood. We can use it for something else.”

When we were finished, the wood was stacked neatly inside the shed. The nails we had removed were separated into two small piles. One pile contained the handful of nails that were straight enough or could be straightened for reuse. The others were set aside to be discarded altogether.

Sandstorm

Posted on by Carlos Declan

I was sitting on the floor looking up at my mother. She was standing in front of the kitchen sink wringing out a wash rag from a pan of water. She bent down and started wiping my face, digging into my ears and nose with the cloth.

I pulled back a bit. She was sure tending to her cleaning chore with a lot of energy.

“Hold still,” she said. “You’ve got enough of the Llano Estacado in your nose and ears to grow a small garden. You wouldn’t want a tomato plant to start growing  out of your ear would you?”

“No, Momma, I wouldn’t,” I said, completely horrified by the thought.

I looked over her shoulder as she resumed working on me. We were in the middle of a sandstorm. The sun was high, but the sand was so thick the sun didn’t so much stream through the kitchen window as ooze through it. The light was a dull yellow. I could hear the wind whistling around the window and the sand pelting against the house.

The sand hung in tiny particles in the air in the kitchen. It was still inside the house and a bit stifling.

Satisfied that I was momentarily safe from being the breeding ground for vegetation, my Mom stepped back and rinsed out the rag. Then she bent down and folded the cloth over several times.

“I know it’s pretty close to wet,” she said. “But hold it over your mouth and nose and breath through it. It’ll keep the sand out of your lungs.”

She smiled and left me on the floor, returning to her work at the sink.

I held the cloth to my face and breathed through it. It did keep the sand out. It was cool and soothing.